Facebook releases React Native for Android

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Facebook today released React Native for Android, extending JavaScript development techniques from the Web and native platforms to Google's popular mobile platform.

React Native allows developers to write applications using JavaScript and React, and use the same core code to create native applications for Web, iOS and Android platforms. The purpose of React Native is to learn once and efficiently write cross-platform native applications.

React Native supports the use of standard platform components, such as UITabBar for iOS and Drawer components for Anroid, so it can provide a unified look and feel across the platform ecosystem. These platform components can be integrated into an application using the React component interface, such as TabBarIOS and DrawerLayoutAndroid.

"Facebook has been using React Native in production for over a year," said a Facebook employee. "Facebook's Ads Manager app, which allows users to manage their accounts and create new ads, is written in React Native. The Ads Manager app is not only Facebook's first app written in React Native, but also the first cross-platform app."

Last month, Facebook detailed its plans and direction for the future development of React Native, including improvements in performance, build tools, and infrastructure.

Facebook put React Native for iOS and React Native for Anroid into the same code base. For details on React Native for Android, please see:

https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/42eb5464fd8a65ed84b799de5d4dc225349449be

React Native codebase on GitHub: https://github.com/facebook/react-native

React Native has also updated the documentation about React Native for Andorid: http://facebook.github.io/react-native/